1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and tool for estimating a ship date profile and, more particularly, a method and tool which estimates a ship date profile by simulating a plurality of dynamic events.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a business (e.g., e-commerce businesses, such as Web-based business) which sells or leases a product (e.g., computers, furniture, automobiles, appliances etc.), where the customer may select one or more features (e.g., options) to be included in the product, providing a customer with the desired lead time-to-shipment (e.g., a number of days for the product to be shipped after the order is placed) and actually shipping the product on time is an important factor in determining the success or failure of the business in today's competitive market. The lead time-to-ship date may be determined and provided to a customer in multiple times during the customer's shopping (e.g., e-shopping) process.
For businesses that are already in operation, when customers inquire about the ship date, or place an order, the ship date is typically calculated by an availability checking computer tool such as ATP (Available-to-Promise) system by checking a master production schedule (MPS), inventory of the products and components, orders, forecasted product quantity, committed quantity, allocated inventory quantity, demand prioritization, and applying various ATP policies such as allocation policies, promising policies and other business rules etc. At least one supply chain management software company, i2, and the assignee of the present application have several patents on the ATP methods and systems.
However, for businesses that have not been in operation yet, such as when a new business is planned, a business transformation is planned or a business environment is expected to change, it is difficult to accurately estimate the profiles of the expected ship dates, such as a mean, range, standard deviation, skew and its change over time etc., because the required data sources do not exist and there are many uncertainties in the business. Since the ship date is directly related to customer service, it is very important to accurately project the ship date profile before a new business process or its change is implemented.
Discrete-event simulation has been around for several decades to simulate stochastic behaviors of materials, services and information flow etc. in analyzing processes of manufacturing, services and various business operations. Especially, supply chain management (SCM) has been one of the areas where a simulation method has been used to evaluate its effectiveness. Most of such usage has been to investigate inventory levels and customer service performance based on various manufacturing and distribution scenarios, and policies in inventory, manufacturing, replenishment and transportation.
However, there presently exist no simulation method or tool that estimates a ship date profile (e.g., determines an expected ship date) for a business (e.g., in a virtual e-commerce business environment), such as a business that is not yet in operation, or a business that is not yet selling or leasing the product (e.g., a product for which actual data is not available for determining a ship date profile).